Yellow gold carries three different greens and this is the only flat one. Green ombre is graded, deepening from the middle of the dial outward, and appears at both case sizes. Bright green is set with diamonds and belongs to 36mm alone. Plain green exists here and nowhere else in the model, at 40mm, on yellow gold, with Roman numerals and no stones. The three share a color family and nothing else, and none of them can be had in the configuration of another, which is the pattern the range follows with almost every color it uses more than once. A buyer who decides they want a green Day-Date has not narrowed the field so much as entered a set of three unrelated ones.
The ground is a deep saturated green applied opaque with no gradient and no metallic component underneath. It holds one reading in every light and simply becomes darker or brighter with the amount reaching it, which makes it the most predictable of the three greens and the most emphatic. Against yellow gold it does something a cool case would not permit: green and gold sit close enough in the spectrum to read as related rather than opposed, so the watch holds together as one warm object with a strong color at its center instead of a colored dial fitted into a contrasting case. The markers are applied Roman numerals in gold, tall and narrow with fine serifs, standing proud with polished faces, and at 40mm the ring has room the smaller case cannot give it, which matters for numerals more than it would for markers since characters are read rather than located. The character at three gives way to the date window. The bezel is set with diamonds around its full circumference, the case is 40mm, and the President bracelet closes it in polished semi-circular links. Numeral proportion is a genuine decision at this diameter rather than a scaling exercise. Roman characters carry internal structure, serifs and stroke weights and counters, and enlarging them uniformly makes them read as heavy rather than as larger. The set here stays narrow relative to its height, so the ring resolves as a band of upright characters, and the gap between each numeral and the minute track is what supplies the openness the larger case is bought for.
A flat saturated ground makes one demand of the calendar that the graded and metallic dials do not. Both discs are printed on backgrounds that must match a color the dial carries uniformly across its whole surface, and because the ground gives the eye a fixed reference, any discrepancy inside an aperture registers at once rather than being absorbed by variation in the field around it. The day is written out in full at twelve in words rather than shortened to three letters, so the wider opening carries the greater share of that burden. The date sits at three beneath a lens set into the crystal. Both discs change instantaneously at midnight rather than creeping through the hour before, the movement runs roughly seventy hours off a full wind, and setting runs through the crown alone, with no correctors interrupting the case band. What the model declines to do belongs in the same account. No Day-Date has ever carried a second time zone, a chronograph or any indication beyond the calendar, so the dial holds two windows, a numeral ring and the hands and nothing else has ever been added. On a flat saturated ground with no material effect to occupy the eye, that restraint is the composition rather than an absence within it.
Eleven grounds are offered on yellow gold at 40mm across thirteen configurations, and seven of the eleven exist on this metal alone: champagne in both forms, green, green ombre, onyx set and plain silver. The two extra configurations come from champagne and silver being offered with a choice of markers, which no other ground on the roster receives; white arrives with Roman numerals only and everything else is fixed in one treatment. Green is among the fixed ones, and Roman numerals are what it takes wherever it appears. Three references carry the roster, 228238 with a fluted bezel and 228348RBR and 228398TBR with set ones, and the configurations are identical across all three. The three greens also divide by treatment in a way that leaves no overlap. Plain green is unset and 40mm only. Green ombre is unset and reaches both sizes. Bright green is set and 36mm only. So no diameter offers more than two of them and no buyer ever chooses between all three, which is the same pattern the range applies to its greys and its blues. Nine grounds are built at this reference and green is one of four offered plain only, with green ombre, silver and white, while two more come both ways and three exist with stones alone.
A strong green dial under a ring of diamonds on a gold case is the least reserved watch in the 40mm range and makes no attempt to be otherwise. Everything about it is warm, saturated and bright, and the only cool element anywhere is the bezel. Collectors who want a gold Day-Date to be visible tend to end up on this or on champagne set, and the difference between them is that champagne extends the case and green argues with it just enough to be noticed. It is also the most modern-looking configuration the metal offers, since a flat saturated green belongs to a recent vocabulary in this model rather than the one it was built on. For a buyer who wants a yellow gold Day-Date that looks like a current watch rather than a continuation of an old one, this is the clearest version of that. The ombre on the same reference is the alternative, and it trades the flat statement for something that only resolves properly in good light. Between them the two greens on this reference cover both ways the model has learned to use the color.
